[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(156)

“Who was he working for?”

“Thrackan Sal-Solo. Who else?”

“And all those situations on Lorrd-you didn’t ‘dream’ about them, did you? You had direct access to the perpetrators.”

Lumiya cast a sideways glance at the bust hovering between her and Nelani. It was beginning to creep back toward her, and the strain of keeping it at bay was showing on her face. “Yes. My visions were waking visions. I could have interfered directly with their plans-probably with exactly the same results you experienced.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I used them as a test for you.” Lumiya closed her eyes and strained, but the bust still moved toward her. “Sith, like Jedi, have to determine the fates of others. Unlike Jedi, they know that sometimes this means sacrificing one so that twenty may live. I had to find out whether you understood that. And you do.”

“How about your confederate?” Jacen asked. “The man Master Skywalker keeps glimpsing but can’t quite see? The man he says doesn’t exist?”

Lumiya managed a laugh that was half-exhausted gasp. “Jacen, that’s you, visions of you. The Sith you will become. Luke can’t make out his features because he’s not willing to accept what he sees through the Force-your face where the next Lord of the Sith stands.” Her last words were little more than a gasp, and her control slipped at that point. The bust of the Bothan hurtled toward her. She cracked her whip at it, a foreshortened stroke that might have missed in any case, but the bust’s trajectory changed, sending the statuary beneath the tendrils. Instead of striking Lumiya’s head or chest, the bust cracked into her right hand, sending the whip spinning from her grip; its tendrils twisted across the floor like living things, scarring it with their passage.

Nelani leapt forward, slashing at her enemy. Her blade came down

On Jacen’s. His blade held hers, his eyes held her eyes. “I’m not through here,” he said.

There was despair in Nelani’s voice. “I don’t know how, but she’s turning you. Can’t you see it?”

“Stop listening with just your ears,” Jacen said. “Look into the Force. Do you really see any flow from her to me, from me to her, something that could alter my mind or my perceptions?”

Nelani held his gaze for a moment more, then closed her eyes.

For that moment, she was vulnerable to a counterattack. But Jacen merely kept his blade before hers. Lumiya did not attack, did not even summon her whip back to her; she merely held her forearm and hand where the bust had hit them. Finally Nelani’s eyes opened again and she seemed calmer. “No,” she admitted. “Lumiya isn’t using any Force techniques against you. You’re not being influenced by the dark side energies here. I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“Turn off your lightsaber,” Jacen said.

She did.

He turned his own off. Now the only sound of menace came from Lumiya’s lightwhip. The older woman looked at the weapon and the glowing tendrils faded to darkness, to almost invisible threads.

“There,” Jacen said. “Now we can work things out.”

“Yes.” Nelani turned toward Lumiya. “Shira Brie, I arrest you in the name of the Galactic Alliance. You will be tried for-“

“No,” Jacen said. “I’ve decided to learn what she has to teach me. That means she needs to remain free. To remain here.”

Nelani looked at him, disbelieving. “Jacen, the law-“

“The law is what we make of it.” He shrugged. “She has said she’s Lumiya, Nelani, but she hasn’t proven it. All we have to do is not believe her, to leave that claim out of our reports, and we’ve followed the letter of the law.”

Nelani moved slightly, stepping back, bringing the hilt of her lightsaber a few centimeters up. “I am arresting her.”

Lumiya interrupted. “I’ll consent to be arrested.”

Both of the Jedi looked at her. “You will?” Jacen asked.

“Of course.” Lumiya looked sober, unhappy. “I know my fate is no longer my own. I want to see the Sith rise with you at the head of the order, Jacen, and for that reason I swear myself to your service.” She knelt as she spoke, lowering her head-an invitation for a blessing, or for a killing stroke. “But whichever one of you is in charge here will choose my fate, my future.”

Her voice low, Nelani said, “Put your hands behind your back.” As Lumiya obeyed, Nelani pulled a pair of stun cuffs from her belt pouch.

Jacen frowned. There was something wrong about this situation, and for a moment he suspected treachery on Lumiya’s part, but a glimpse into the likely immediate future dispelled that notion. He saw Lumiya obedient, unresisting, being led back to the shuttle.